HTPC...

[N!ck]

Well basically my friend has a lot of digital media ie. films and TV episodes, and they are currently using media centre hard drives to view it on the TV downstairs. They have 2 x 500GB ones and they are getting full now. Rather than buying another one to house more media i suggested why not sell the media centre HDDs and put the money towards a HTPC as it would make things easier to manage.

He's asked me to price how much a basic HTPC would cost. Basically it only really needs the functionality of displaying videos onto the TV, so the hardware can be pretty low end. He also would like a graphics card with a HDMI output on it, but it's not necessary.

Now i've just had a quick look for cases and I don't seem to be able to find anything suitable. Obviously it's going to be sat underneath the TV on the stand or whatever, so it needs to be relatively small. It also needs to have plenty of room for hard drives in it. I'd say space for about 4 which us where my problem came in lol.

Basically i'm looking for a relatively small computer case which has room for around 4 HDDs. I'm also looking for a graphics card that will fit in the case and has a HDMI output if possible.

Any suggestions?

[Luke]

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/145553 £75.73

Not what you asked for, but i'd recomend getting a blu-ray/hd-dvd drive, as your gonna use a HDMI output, so why not turn it into a hd dvd player as well?

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/129526 £38.74

Has compatability for good cooling, 6 drive bays, and an aluminium brush

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/145330 £53

nothing special, only has 256mb RAM, but it's not for playig highend games i believe, has HDMI output, to workwith bluray drive.

Comes to - £167.47

Enjoy

Also, u could buy a couple of these
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/130454 £44.49

I have 1 and it works like a charm

and to realy make it well, mint! add one of these tuners, to recorde stuff
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/143329 - Only £18.41

Comes with remote, and reciever, and if u mut MCE 2005, or vista, premium/ultimate,you'll be able to record of it

Hope it go's well.

[N!ck]

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/145553 £75.73

Not what you asked for, but i'd recomend getting a blu-ray/hd-dvd drive, as your gonna use a HDMI output, so why not turn it into a hd dvd player as well?

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/129526 £38.74

Has compatability for good cooling, 6 drive bays, and an aluminium brush

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/145330 £53

nothing special, only has 256mb RAM, but it's not for playig highend games i believe, has HDMI output, to workwith bluray drive.

Comes to - £167.47

Enjoy

Also, u could buy a couple of these
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/130454 £44.49

I have 1 and it works like a charm

and to realy make it well, mint! add one of these tuners, to recorde stuff
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/143329 - Only £18.41

Comes with remote, and reciever, and if u mut MCE 2005, or vista, premium/ultimate,you'll be able to record of it

Hope it go's well.

Hey, thanks for that.

I've been having a look around and it seems that some motherboards are available with HDMI ports, so i'd probably put one of them in to save a bit of money in the graphics area.

Also, that case you posted only has room for two 3.5" hard drives. I don''t think a decent amount of HDD space will be available in any suitably small case from what i've seen.

+rep if i can though.

[Luke]

oops, my mistake, sorry

bit pricey, but you could just buy

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/134684

which is 1TB big, that will be suitable, as it's 3.5", SATA and 2 would make 2 TB, which i'm sure would last a while lol

[Hayd93]

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/143915

Just spotted that if that helps

[Luke]

i was gonna post tha,t but didn't because of the price lol

[N!ck]

Thanks for the help so far. I'll see what he thinks of the idea pf a slightly bigger case lol.